A Late Night Visitor
by Dailenna
Summary: A pretranslation idea of Ed's visit to Riza's apartment in chapter 58. Written just after the RAW came out, unearthed and typed up for your entertainment.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own FMA

**Warning:** May contain spoilers for or up to chapter 58 of the manga.

**Notes:** I wrote this piece ages ago, when the RAW of chapter 58 was out, but the translations weren't yet. I read it, and then went off and wrote this with the images in my mind, rather than looking at the actual pictures. So this doesn't follow exactly with the images and you can't just take the dialogue and slot it into the speech bubbles for an alternate translation, but it does take place in the exact same settings with a few similar themes.

I _have_ taken the time to revamp it. Otherwise . . . ugh. It had good ideas, but I would have written this at about the same time I wrote "Roy's Favourite Things", and while that had a strong idea behind it, and did better because of that (and because of the fact that I reworded a song lots of people already knew :3), this doesn't really have anything else to go by, and so has to pass through its own merits, which I believe weren't up to my more recent standards. Hopefully I've remedied that, but we'll have to see. I thought that it's actually quite similar to "Beneath the Surface" in it's reflective quality, but that might just be me.

It does switch between points of view, but it doesn't stay determinately with either of them for the whole thing, so I didn't separate the point of view shifts, because there were too many in such a small place of time. I think you're all intelligent enough to understand what's happening where, though :)

"**A Late Night Visitor**" by **Dailenna**

Riza listened carefully through the trickle of the water. Had she been mistaken, or . . ? No, there it was again – Black Hayate was barking at something. There must have been someone there. Hopefully at the door rather than just having climbed in through a window.

She turned off the water and wrapped a towel around herself, quickly squeezing her hair as dry as she could before poking her head out of the bathroom. Yes, Hayate was barking in the direction of the door.

"Who is it?" she called, wondering who might be coming to visit her so late at night. She didn't have many visitors normally, let alone at this time.

"It's me – Edward Elric," came the reply, succinct and to the point.

She frowned as she began to dry herself off slowly so that she could still hear him. "Edward? But it's so late."

"I have something to return to you."

Something to return to her? Oh yes, now she remembered. "You could have brought that any time," she called, hastily pulling on some pants.

"Well, I'm here now. Are you gonna open up or is this a game of twenty questions?"

"Just a second."

She sounded a little preoccupied in there. What had he caught her in the middle of? He stood outside the door waiting, and by the time she finally opened the door he half expected to see the feet of some man disappearing out of the window.

Dripping blonde hair stuck to her back and Ed could already see by the look on her face that she was lamenting the choice of a white shirt, but she stoically hung her towel around her neck and invited Ed to come in and sit down.

He took a seat, putting the gun she had allowed him to borrow onto the table.

"Want a drink?"

He scratched at the back of his neck, raising an eyebrow at the piles of cardboard boxes littering the hall. "Yeah, why not."

"Coffee? Tea?"

"Coffee's good – one sugar and no milk, please."

The Lieutenant smiled to herself and bustled around her adjoining kitchenette, plucking this and that from cupboards to make the drinks. As the kettle boiled she leant back against the counter and crossed her arms beneath her breasts. "I'll take a guess and say that you didn't come just to give me my gun back," she said.

He hesitated for a moment. He had come to talk about other things, but he wasn't sure how to approach the idea so instead of tiptoeing his way around it, he said it straight out. "Assigned as the Fuhrer's Personal Assistant, eh?" His fingers drummed on the table, but a whining puppy soon distracted him and he tickled the ball of fur's ears for a while, waiting for her reply.

Riza had stopped. She sighed and got back to making their drinks. "So it seems. It's not the 'promotion' I would have chosen, had I the choice, but who knows . . ."

After a minute or so she had two steaming cups in her hands, and she came to join Ed at the table.

He took his cup and cradled it in his hands. "No more fieldwork at least. I mean, you've probably almost been killed three times in the last four or five months. Now it'll just be . . . secretarial duties." Somehow he didn't think this was oh-so-appealing for Hawkeye. "No more Mustang to put up with, either." Surely that would be a bonus for anyone.

She frowned. "Alright, quit your whining Edward – we both know that this is just a way to put the Colonel in a tight spot. He makes a wrong move, and I go bye-bye." She took a breath to calm herself and continued with a more composed tone. "The others have been sent all over the country. If it wasn't for the Fuhrer wanting to get at you too, you know all very well that you'd probably find yourself settled somewhere over the Xing desert."

Ed gulped down some of his coffee guiltily. She had a point. The Fuhrer had subtly reminded him of his knowledge of Winry when he, Mustang and the Fuhrer had had their cosy little tête-à-tête. If Ed himself hadn't been one of the ones being bribed it was likely that he'd have been assigned to yet another section of the military.

It all seemed hopeless, but he had never been one to give up, even when all seemed lost. "If you give us just a few weeks, we'll figure a way out of this," Ed confided.

Hawkeye sighed, glancing down at her own cup briefly before looking back up at him with fiery eyes. "I know. It'll just be sufficiently awkward for all of us until then." Her eyes latched onto at the gun on the table. "Thanks for bringing it back."

"No problem," he muttered, taking another swig.

The sat, both staring into their cups for some time until Edward spoke again. "Are you scared?" He almost laughed at his own question. Riza Hawkeye scared? She – the woman who had put more than ten rounds into various Homunculi? Who had been injured time and again by all sorts of opponents? Who was the _best damn sniper_ seen in the army for many a year? She had seen fear and shot it to pieces. Why would she be–

"Scared?" she asked, wistfully gazing out of her window. Edward looked over to see if there had been a man after all and he was standing on the fire escape, but no-one was there, and he concluded that she must have just been looking into the distance. "I suppose I am," she continued hesitantly. "Not that I'm afraid I'll be stuck in this position for long. It's just . . . who knows what you two will get up to these days? On your quests for glory and all."

Taken aback, Ed gave her a slight smile. Lieutenant Hawkeye, just like the few other military women he knew, had taken cast a protective eye over the two Elric boys. It was almost like having a handful of mothers to take care of them . . . except none of the women had that same scent of home on them that he remembered.

Ed smiled sadly. Even _he_ didn't know what he'd get up to next. He and Al had been all over the place in the past few years, looking for a way to restore Al's body. Now that Ed knew where it was, he still had to find a way to bring the two together – body and soul.

Standing up, Hawkeye took Ed's empty cup from his hands and carried it across to the sink. She only had her back turned for a short amount of time, but when Ed looked up, it was long enough for him to notice.

"Hawkeye, what's that on your back?"

Her eyes widened and she reached over her shoulder with her free hand to swat off what she supposed was a bug. Her hands only encountered a damp shirt.

"No, not _on_ your shirt," he amended. "It was through it, on your back."

Obviously the towel hadn't completely done its job and the water still in her hair had soaked through. At least it was only the back of her shirt that was wet.

"Oh, that's nothing impressive," she told him, "just an old tattoo, that's all."

He eyed her oddly, not having supposed her the sort for tattoos – and by the looks of it, that one had been large enough to take up most of her back. He hadn't been able to make out the details, but the shade of it beneath her shirt had definitely covered more skin than the average tattoo did, even for a soldier.

By the way that she continued on rinsing out the cups and not saying another word, Ed assumed that she didn't want to talk about it any more. "Oh, okay," he said, trying to put it from his mind. "Well, it's getting late – later, I mean. Maybe I should be getting back to Al," he muttered.

She gave a nod and a contemplative smile

"I think I'll head off. Goodnight, Lieutenant."

"Goodnight, Edward. Give Alphonse my regards."

And he left.

She slumped down into a chair, one hand absently putting Black Hayate, placating the otherwise adventurous dog, and the other hand rubbing at the salamander array on her back.


End file.
